25 June, 2012

ELIE WIESEL: BOSNIA WAS GENOCIDE

ELIE WIESEL

INTRO: In November 1992, concerned about the continuous reports about mass killing emanating from the former Yugoslavia, Elie Wiesel (b. 1928), survivor of the Holocaust/Shoah, Nobel Peace Prize recipient, and committed human rights activist, traveled to Belgrade, Sarajevo, Banja Luka, and the Manjaca concentration camp.Upon his return to the United States, he urged U.S. Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger (b. 1930), serving in the administration of President George H. W. Bush (b. 1924), of the moral necessity of speaking out against the genocide that was occurring. Wiesel, however, was unsuccessful in his attempt to move the Bush administration (1988-1992) to action.

Eighteen months later, on April 22, 1993, at the opening of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., Wiesel further urged then President Clinton (b. 1946) on the necessity of addressing the Bosnian genocide. Against, Wiesel was unsuccessful.

Holocaust survivor and human rights advocate Elie Wiesel has cautioned against comparing the Iranian threat to the atrocities carried out by the Nazis.

Mr Wiesel, 83, told Globes that it was “unacceptable and impossible to make comparisons with the Holocaust”.

The survivor, who was born in Romania and was a prisoner in Auschwitz and Buchenwald, said: “Iran is a danger, but to claim that it is creating a second Auschwitz? I compare nothing to the Holocaust.”

He added: “Only Auschwitz was Auschwitz. I went to Yugoslavia [see photos of Serb-run concentration camps in Bosnia: gallery #1, gallery #2, gallery #3, gallery #4] when reporters said that there was a Holocaust starting there. There was genocide, but not an Auschwitz. “When you make a comparison to the Holocaust it works both ways, and soon people will say what happened in Auschwitz was ‘only what happened in Bosnia.’”

His remarks came as both Israel’s president and prime minister expressed concern about Iranian nuclear ambitions during speeches at the official Yom Ha’Shoah service in Jerusalem.

Benjamin Netanyahu warned: “Those who dismiss the Iranian threat as a whim or an exaggeration haven’t learned a thing from the Holocaust.”

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Srebrenica Genocide is not a matter of anybody's opinion; it's a judicial fact recognized first by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia and subsequently by the International Court of Justice.